1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a layout editing apparatus and a layout editing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the necessity for CRM and one-to-one marketing attracts attention because of shortened product life cycles due to multi-product production and consumers' preference for customize services due to widespread use of the Internet, so as to increase customer satisfaction and acquire new customers and enclose the customers by using these methods.
Note that the “CRM” is abbreviation for Customer Relationship Management. The One-to-One marketing means a kind of database marketing of constructing a database of personal attribute information of each customer such as age, sex, hobby, preference and purchase history, analyzing the contents and providing an offer appropriate to the customer. As a typified On-to-One marketing method, variable printing can be given.
Especially nowadays, in accordance with the progress of DTP (Desk Top Publishing) technique and popularization of digital printers, a variable printing system to customize and output a document for each customer has been developed. Then an optimum layout of contents in different amounts for respective customers is required.
Conventionally, the variable printing system generates a layout with containers or the like on a document, and links the database to the layout. However, as the sizes of the containers for texts and images are fixed, upon insertion of data in the database into the containers, when the data amount is larger than the container size, text overlap, image loss or the like occurs. On the other hand, when the data amount is smaller than the container size, a clearance is generated.
To solve this problem, an automatic layout system has been proposed. The automatic layout system is capable of variably setting the sizes of containers for texts and images. Further, an automatic layout system capable of variably setting container sizes and increasing the container size in correspondence with the amount of inserted data is also known. Further, a technique of, upon handling texts, when data in a size without a fixed container size is inserted, reducing the font size of the text so as to display all the text in the container is also known.
However, when the container size is bigger, the container is overlapped with another container on the same document. Further, upon adjustment of font size, when the amount of text is large, the font size becomes too small.
As another automatic layout technique to solve the above problems, a “layout designing device” which reduces the size of a container when the size of adjacent container becomes bigger, is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216.
Further, as a variable printing system, in addition to a technique of laying out 1 record on 1 document, a multi-recording technique of laying out a large number of records on 1 document is known. With this technique, it is possible to lay out different numbers of data for one customer, and generate a more customized document for each customer.
In variable printing, a system to dynamically change a layout frame (container) in correspondence with content sizes to appropriately lay out contents in different sizes is known. However, the system is used on the premise of use of with templates with respect to a database. To users, it is difficult to generate templates, and high level of knowledge to use a layout engine is required.
When a list of contents in various shapes and sizes extracted from various sources is made, or when automatic layout is performed without template, the array of contents is inefficient and wasteful margins occur in some layouts.